


Call of the Horizon

by jaspurhundur



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Panic Attacks, Pre-Kingdom Hearts I, Riku hasn't heard of healthy coping mechanisms yet, gratuitous descriptions of sunrises, heavy handed Kingdom Hearts brand symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-01 22:22:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20265445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaspurhundur/pseuds/jaspurhundur
Summary: He felt...claustrophobic.It was a feeling that had been settling over him for a while now, like a weighted fishing net, entangling his limbs, dragging him down to the farthest abyssal depths of the ocean where the sun couldn’t penetrate. He was drowning in the dark and pressure and he just wantedout.Riku has been feeling more and more restless lately, and he isn't dealing with it well.





	Call of the Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> Who likes KH1 Riku? I sure do!!!
> 
> His motivations in KH1 and how his desperation to leave the islands led him to make the poor decisions he did are really interesting to me. I wanted to explore his character a little, and especially touch on how his anxiety and frustration had escalated over time to turn him into the person he was in the first game. Here's hoping those intentions come through properly.
> 
> Also, this is my first time posting here, so if there's a tag or something I really need to add/fix, please let me know!

Riku’s boat knocked gently against the pilings as he drew even with the dock and tied up to one of the cleats. The dull noise of wood against wood sounded muted in the pre-dawn hush. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to paddle over from the main island in the dark, but Riku couldn’t find it in himself to care about rules like that these days, least of all after a sleepless night. 

He stepped from his gently rocking canoe to the dock with the ease of someone who had done so countless times before. After giving his dock line an experimental tug to ensure that it was securely tied, he began to make his way around the perimeter of the island to the cove on the opposite side. The sand, cast in a lavender hue by the pale early morning light, shifted softly under his step. Above his head, the gulls had already taken up their wheeling and shrieking, a sound nearly as ceaseless as that of the waves.

Once he reached the cove, Riku took a seat in the sand just out of the reach of the tide. He was just in time. A fiery gradient on the horizon heralded the imminent sunrise. Riku squinted into the light as the blazing gold rim of the sun rose into view only minutes later. He sat in silence as it continued to climb rapidly, a radiant crown hanging in the orange-streaked sky, until he had to close his eyes completely against the light. It illuminated the backs of his eyelids and warmed the bare skin of his face and arms, but deep in his chest, next to his heart, lay a cold, black pit that not even the brightest light seemed able to touch anymore.

When had the dawn ceased to reach him?

Riku frowned in frustration and, seized by a sudden restlessness, pushed himself to his feet to resume walking along the beach.

He felt...claustrophobic.

It was a feeling that had been settling over him for a while now, like a weighted fishing net, entangling his limbs, dragging him down to the farthest abyssal depths of the ocean where the sun couldn’t penetrate. He was drowning in the dark and pressure and he just wanted _out_.

Riku felt his hands curl into fists, so tight they began to shake from the effort. He didn’t know where he was walking and it didn’t matter. There was nowhere on this island to _go_. He felt like he knew every tree, every rock and flower - hell, every grain of sand. The novelty had long since faded, the last mystery given up years ago with the discovery of the secret place. It was all the same now, and Riku was sick of it.

An outsider might have found his chronic dissatisfaction absurd. Was he ungrateful for the things he had? His loving friends and a whole island to call his own? What right had he to complain when he lived in a veritable paradise? Riku truly didn’t know, but that didn’t stop the feelings from gnawing at him day in and day out.

He chanced another glance toward the sun. It was too bright. With a pang of shame, he turned his face away, allowing his hair to fall over his eyes like a veil.

Maybe he wasn’t worthy of the sunrise. Maybe sunset was more his style. Twilight. Dusk.

Face downcast, Riku’s eyes fell on a scallop shell that lay in the sand just above the tide line, pinkish-orange contrasting delicately with the white sand. Riku nudged it, then turned it over with the toe of his shoe before bending over to pick it up. Running his fingers along the ridges, he was struck by an odd sense of kinship. Did this shell, too, feel trapped, unable to be washed back out to sea?

With sudden ferocity, he turned and flung the shell into the sea. It spun, frisbee-like, skipped once off the crest of a wave, and sank below the surface. Riku stared at the place where it had disappeared, jaw clenched. He didn’t feel any better; if anything, he felt worse. Jerking his head back to stare at the ground, he resumed pacing along the sand, his agitation now outwardly apparent in his stiff strides and heavy footfalls.

After a few sullen minutes of walking, the sand suddenly gave way to wood planks beneath him, and Riku looked up with mild surprise. His feet had carried him back to the other side of the island, and he now stood at the head of the bridge leading to the paopu tree. 

He found himself hesitating there for a moment, hit with the strange feeling that he shouldn’t go there. The tree was _Sora’s_ place. And Kairi’s. How could Riku bring his shadows to their place of happiness?

But the tree was a source of comfort for him, too, fragile though that comfort might feel these days. His subconscious had brought him here, after all, when he was desperately in need of something to ground him.

Mind made up, he crossed the bridge and pulled himself up to sit on the tree’s deeply sloped trunk. Most of the time, Riku opted to lean against it while Sora and Kairi took the prime seats, but they weren’t here now, and he wanted to sit. 

At least it wasn’t so bright on this side of the island. Though daylight was fast encroaching, a wash of purple and deep blue still clung to the western horizon. As he looked out at it, Riku was gripped by the familiar longing - no, the _need_ \- to reach that point and to travel beyond it. It was a nearly physical ache that began deep in his core and rose like bile into his throat. 

It was like a restless energy that couldn’t be quelled by any amount of exercise, not a dozen races along the beach or hours of sparring with Sora. His heart drew him only to the horizon, so tantalizing but so utterly out of reach, the water between it and him a barrier as absolute as prison bars.

There was no particular place he was looking for. Of course, he wanted to see different worlds, but his longing wasn’t really for the destination so much as for the interim, the feeling of transience on the road between two locations. Really, Riku didn’t feel like he belonged in any one place. The thought of staying in one spot forever had never sat well with him. He figured he was meant to be impermanent, a soul in perpetual migration.

His friends didn’t understand. Sure, Sora and Kairi might jump at the chance for adventure, but at the end of the day they always wanted to go home.

Riku had never been able to put it into words that it didn’t feel like home to him.

This certainty, this call to wander, had plagued him to some degree for as long as he could remember. Sometimes he attributed it to Kairi, the living confirmation that there was more to the universe than a couple of tiny islands. But really, it had been there since long before her arrival on Destiny Islands. Riku had a memory, hazy around the edges yet no less paramount, featuring a stranger, a key, a promise of strength and a life without borders.

The coals has always been smoldering, but Kairi had been the one to stoke them into flame. Or rather, douse them with gasoline.

Riku leaned forward with a frustrated groan, propping his elbows on his knees and digging the heels of his hands into his eyes until he saw stars. 

His mind was so _loud_. 

It was like his longing had decided to give voice to itself. It twisted and clamored inside his skull, screaming the same thing over and over, until the noise reverberated down his spine to his chest and made the dark pit there roil and bellow its agreement.

_I need to go._

Without really realizing what he was doing, Riku pushed himself off the paopu tree and took the few steps that brought him to the edge of the little island. He could just _go_, his turbid mind told him. He could wade into the surf and just keep going, just swim until he either exhausted himself and sank into the depths like that scallop shell or found whatever it was his heart yearned for. What was there to stop him?

“Riku?”

A voice cut through the buzzing in Riku’s head, probably the only voice in the universe that could have gotten through to him in that moment. He broke out of his spiraling thoughts with a gasp. He was trembling, he realized, his toes hanging over the edge of the rock. He took a step backwards and turned around to face the source of the voice, quickly, guiltily. 

Sora had draped his torso carelessly over the trunk of the paopu tree, face bearing its usual easy grin. Kairi stood a few steps behind him. Riku should have spotted them rowing over, or heard their footsteps coming across the bridge, but he had been too deep inside his own head. 

The smile slid off Sora’s face as he took in Riku’s expression. “Are you okay?” he asked. He had always been so sensitive to others’ feelings. In that moment, Riku desperately wished he wasn’t. 

“I’m-” His voice came out embarrassingly weak and hoarse. He cleared his throat, forced a neutral expression onto his face, and tried again. “I’m fine. Just came out early to think.”

Sora frowned, not looking at all convinced. _Let it go_, Riku pleaded internally, _Just challenge me to a sword fight or something like usual._

But of course Sora couldn’t let it go that easily. Not when it was something important. “What were you thinking about?” he asked, putting a deceptively innocent look on his face. 

Riku shrugged one shoulder with forced nonchalance. “Nothing really, just…” He turned halfway to look back out at the sea as he searched for an excuse that didn't require him to bare his soul. His eyes landed on a piece of driftwood bobbing in the surf a short way offshore, and the first seed of a plan took root in his mind.

“Just…?” That was Kairi, gently prompting him when he’d been silent for too long. She had stepped forward to lean her forearms against the trunk of the paopu tree beside Sora. Riku’s gaze slid from her expectant face to Sora’s. Faces he might never see again if he left the island. 

The thought made his heart seize unexpectedly. The idea of losing his friends, he realized, was just as unthinkable as that of living out his days on Destiny Islands. 

An old ambition, one that had been nearly smothered by Riku's anger and frustration, flickered tentatively back to life. The drive to not merely run away, but to make something worthwhile of himself - to go out into the worlds and find there the strength he needed to protect the things that mattered most to him. And he couldn’t do that if he left those things behind.

His gaze found the bobbing driftwood again.

But suppose he took them _with_ him?

Meeting Sora’s eyes again, a conspiratorial smile began to tug at Riku’s lips.

“Actually,” he began, “I just had an idea.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you SO much for reading! 
> 
> I haven't written anything in earnest (outside of school) for literal years, so I'm definitely rusty. This is also a fairly personal fic and writing it was a surprisingly emotional experience. Because if I'm doing this then I'm going all out, apparently.
> 
> Basically this whole thing is indulgent and vulnerable for me, so if even one other person besides me enjoys this then I will be over the moon.
> 
> I'm eager to make more kh friends, so if you did see something you liked here then feel free to say hi to me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/kaktohund)!


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